Blogs

• Nitobi at the Voices That Matter GWT Conference
• Happy Halloween Internets!

Our friends over at ElasticPath have drawn up this nice little pic of the Google:)

Nice work guys! Play safe with the bottle rockets!  Of course they have lots of great ecommerce tips and tricks over on their blog too.

Mark your Calendars Dec 3-6 2007 for Voices That Matter: Google Web Toolkit conference in San Francisco.  Dave, Alexei and I will be there giving a seminar on the 3rd.

What’s it all about?  Good Question:

The Voices That Matter: Google Web Toolkit conference will introduce you to the team at Google, including Google Web Toolkit (GWT) creators Bruce Johnson and Joel Webber, who are living and breathing GWT every day. You will learn from them and see for yourself how enthusiastic they are about GWT and the members of its strong and growing developer community.

So what are we doing wrapped up in a GWT conference?  Well it’s still Ajax and RIA!  We did write a book with the Prentice Hall who’d putting it on too) We’re going to give you some JavaScript basics and some big picture stuff on usability, strategy and accessibility.  Heck it could be Flex or Silverlight and most of the stuff in the afternoon would still apply!  Here’s some more details on what we’re doing:

Monday morning, December 3
JavaScript Bootcamp
Dave Johnson, CTO and Cofounder, Nitobi Software Inc.
Alexei White, Product Manager, Nitobi Software Inc.

Monday afternoon, December 3
Ajax: The Big Picture
Andre Charland, President and Cofounder, Nitobi Software Inc.
Alexei White, Product Manager, Nitobi Software Inc.

 

Should be fun (and informative). I’m excited to learn more about GWT myself and meet members of the team!  It’s really an honor to have been invited to speak along side this line up of Ajax all-stars!

I’m patting myself on the pack for blogging about this more than a month in advance…hopefully I can keep this trend up:)

[UPDATE – I have discount code, it is GW-CHAR and is valid for a $100 discount off the price of the event.]

Technorati Tags: ajax, event, gwt, usability, training, seminar, google, prenticehall, enterpriseajax, nitobi, learn, teach

• Ajax Experience East 2007 – Thoughts and Notes
  (tags: ajax ajaxexperience east boston 2007)
• Nitobi Grid is a Job Requirement!
  (tags: java job jobdescription nitobi grid ajax skills)

Wow! Just found this job posting for a Java developer with an interesting prerequisite:

“Must know java and be familiar with Nitobi.com grids.”

Hey Java coders and consultants for hire go download your Nitobi components here🙂

Technorati Tags: java, job, jobdescription, nitobi, grid, ajax, skills

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Dave and I just got back from the Ajax Experience in Boston.  It was a great time, although a bit short given the travel time required from Vancouver.

I was invited to participate on a panel about the future of Ajax with John Resig, Douglas Crockford and Asa Raskin.of Humanized.pan It turned into the future of JavaScript panel which I was a bit disappointed about.  I think we have so much innovation that can be done without a new language that’s this conversation is a bit early.  Oh well, it is also important to discuss the future of our beloved scripting language(s).  I agree with Doug that we need a smaller set of changes that address security, rather than radical changes towards strong typing, etc… with alleged benefits like performance and better programming practices.  Of course Brendan Eich has an opinion too:)

Dave gave a talk on testing Ajax that covered wide range of topics to give developers and toolbox of techniques and utilities to improve QA.  He covered JSUnit, Selenium, Cruise Control, Firebug and sure .  I’m sure his slides will be online soon so I can link to them:)

If I had to pick highlights….talking about Ajax challenges and opportunities with Kevin Hoyt. Shooting the breeze with Ben and Dion about Ajax forms. Drinking and joking with Brent Ashley. Finally meeting Pete Forde and learning about Jester and unspace.

I actually made it to a few sessions this time:)  Here are my notes:

Zimbra Offline

-footprint 16Mb (rather large but they have entire web server in there)
-wrote a custom server (client version of the server side app)
-took about 1yr (1 to 2 months to get a demo together, the rest to get it all working)
-didn’t have to write new JS and client didn’t have to change much at all (nice!)
-the browser is just talking to a new server
-Zimbra has 8 Millon paid mailboxes
-150K lines of JS (holy shit!)

More info:
–www.zimbra.com/desktop
–www.zimbra.com/blog

Using Eclipse and to Develop Ajax Applications
-Michael Kaply – [email protected]
-ATF is an IDE for JavaScript developers
-Extensible for ajax toolkits and JS libraries into the IDE
-Built on Eclipse WebTools project
-Has Mozilla built into it for viewing,debugging etc…
-Doesn’t ship with any toolkits or libraries…these need to be downloaded separately (Dojo, Rico, etc.. are already integrated)
-Have to add script tag manually to page
-JS Debugging
-PHP, JSP, etc…
-CSS and Box Model stuff
-they want contributors

More info:
–www.eclipse.org/atf/downloads

Qooxdoo
-An Ajax toolkit and framework
-Open Source – LGPL and EPL
-started by 1&1 in 2005 (thelargest Hosting company in the world)
-Major browsers (Safari 3 only not earlier)
-server agnostic,
-OO JS
-widgets, custom widget framework, layout managers, keyboard support, drag and drop, event based, theming
-qooxdoo.org
-has a build tool (dev and release mode)
-minize etc…
-automatic transport selction (XHR, iFrame, Script)
-php, perl and java backends (docs on writing others)
-back button and bookmarking
-internationalization support
-dev tools: debugging, logging, unit test, code fomratting, validator, profiler, ide support, inspector

More Info:
–http://qooxdoo.org

Technorati Tags: ajax, ajaxexperience, east, boston, 2007

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• Are you ready for AJAX risks?
  “Are you ready for AJAX risks? It’s a cool collection of technologies, but there’s downside to those slick UIs. Here’s how to be best prepared.” Basically our chapter on Ajax risk from our book “Enterprise Ajax”.
  (tags: ajax enterpriseajax risk development)

• Dave and I @The Ajax Experience in Boston
  (tags: ajax ajaxexperience boston testing qa debugging)
• Facebook + Blackberry
  (tags: blackberry apps development sdk facebook mobile rim socialnetworking gtalk gmail googlemap)
• WPP Makes Blast Radius Acquisition Official – Advertising Age – Digital
  “WPP Group officially announced its acquisition of Vancouver digital agency Blast Radius — underlining its status as one of the most aggressive holding companies when it comes to buying digital-technology firms.” We’ve been doing some Ajax sharp shootin
  (tags: blastradius webdev client acquisition digitalagency wpp vancouver business)

Nice RIM is developing a Facebook app. Just caught this over on Mashable.

it looks as though you can do just about everything Facebook has to offer, in much than just a glorified WAP implementation. Notifications and messages are integrated with the BlackBerry’s push-based architecture. The interface is graphical, with icon representations for the major functions of the system.

That’s awesome, I hope more folks start building apps for Blackberries, I’m basically addicted to GTalk, Gmail and Google Maps on my Blackberry. It’s actually one of the big reasons I can’t switch to the iPhone yet. Hopefully this will get easier because:

they’ll be opening up their platform so that “third-party developers can integrate features from web-based applications to work on mobile devices.”

.
Dave and I have been brainstorming some cool geo type apps for the RIM devices…stay tuned.

[Thanks to Kris Sutherland of Chalk for the heads up]

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Dave and I just got into Boston for the Ajax Experience.  We’re giving a talk on Ajax testing and debugging Friday at 3:45pm.

Here’s the brief from their site:

Building high-performance, robust Ajax applications is challenging at the best of times. But, without proper quality assurance and testing techniques, it can be treacherous.

Testing, QA and performance optimization is more important today than ever because of the large increase in Ajax user interfaces and the growing number of developers who have recently started using Ajax. Once Ajax developers have mastered using a popular framework they will need tools and techniques to ensure they are delivering a quality product into the marketplace. Properly tested and tuned Ajax applications will mean a reduced number of bugs, shorter QA cycles, faster websites and better user experiences.

In this session, Andre and Dave show you how to set-up a reliable test framework, methodology, and build process that automates much of the tedious, manual effort that comes with browser-based development.

This session will cover JavaScript unit testing, functional testing for your web application, automating the testing process, and debugging JavaScript and debugging server responses. Learn about testing and debugging with current tools such as FireBug, YSlow, JSUnit, Selenium and CruiseControl, as well as how to find memory leaks and increase performance with JavaScript optimizations. Andre and Dave will walk you through the debugging and testing tools available for Ajax developers, and how to use these tools to minimize bugs and build better Ajax applications.

In this session, you will learn:

• Testing tools and concepts for Ajax;
• Debugging techniques and tools;
• How to implement a solid QA strategy for your Ajax team.

Drop us a line or follow us on Twitter.  (Me & Dave)

Technorati Tags: ajax, ajaxexperience, boston, testing, qa, debugging

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